1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to back-plane connectors and more specifically to a bay for receiving a removable computer peripheral device, such as a hard disk drive or a CD-ROM drive, configured for instance according to the Intel-Microsoft-Compaq "Device Bay" standards.
2. Description of the Related Art.
FIG. 1 schematically shows a removable peripheral device 10 being inserted into a bay 12. Bay 12 includes a back-plane 14 provided with a connector 16 adapted to mate a corresponding connector (not shown) on the back of device 10. Cooperating guiding means (not shown) of device 10 and bay 12 ensure that, when device 10 is fully pushed into the bay, the connectors of the back-plane and of device 10 engage each other. In practice, the two connectors will not exactly face each other, whereby they may be damaged upon engagement.
Some connectors are specifically designed to bend to a certain extent for compensating a misalignment. However, in some cases, the bending of the connectors may not be sufficient for compensating a misalignment. In other cases, although a misalignment may be compensated by the bending, an intensive use will make the connectors have a short life time.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,652,695 discloses a removable hard drive carrier and bay assembly wherein the hard drive carrier has a floating connector for compensating a misalignment with a mating connector. The carrier connector is mounted on a printed circuit board, or PCB, which is held in slots with lateral and longitudinal clearance.
A drawback of this floating connector mechanism is that the connector does not have a known rest position, since all the positions within the floating range are stable. As a consequence, if the connector is in a limit rest position where one edge of the PCB is fully engaged in a slot, a misalignment which would lead the connector to go in an opposite limit position may not be compensated.